You and Pinterest

Are You On Pinterest?

I started out on Pinterest in the summer of 2010. I was part of a Pin It Forward blog project where each of us wrote about What Home Means To Me after creating a pinboard around the topic. I liked the site but didn’t use it much for about another year. Although I like Pinterest and use it regularly now, I’ve been as surprised as anyone else about how much it’s taken off in recent months. What doesn’t surprise me is that now that it’s become popular there are suddenly loads of Pinterest clones.

Some of the Pinterest clones are truly almost exact replicas of the site. Pinspire is an example of that. Those don’t interest me. Why go somewhere other than Pinterest to do what you can do there? But what does interest me is the niche Pinterest alternatives that are designed specifically to visually network with others who share the same unique interests that you do.

I’ve always liked niche sites better than big sites on the web. I like Ravelry (knit and crochet social networking) better than Facebook and Hookey (just crochet social networking) better than Facebook. I liked Mixx a lot better than Digg when I was into social bookmarking and I liked Hugg (green bookmarking) and Kirtsy (girly bookmarking) better than Mixx. So naturally I’m interested in the niche Pinterest clones. And believe me, there is a site for just about everything that could visually interest you.

Like Travel? There’s a Pinterest for That

There are quite a few Pinterest clones for people who love sharing travel photos and travel ideas. Trippy is a top choice from what I can tell. Another choice is Wanderfly which includes some features of Yelp-style or TripAdvisor-style reviews to help with travel plans. I think these are fun sites to look at for daydreaming about travel. They may also help with getting ideas for travel planning. And I think that there’s potential for niche travel sites to be used to plan group travel in an efficient and fun way. If nothing else it’s the type of tool that a group travel planning site could easily adopt and adapt to suit their users’ needs.

Like Foursquare and Facebook Check In? Try This.

UrbanTag is billed by many people as a Pinterest clone that falls in the travel category. However, I think it’s more like a Foursquare for Pinterest lovers. You can tag the places you’ve been, including a photo, the location and some notes about it. You can recommend places to others and you can create boards to remember places that you want to check out. Everplaces is another Pinterest alternative that is sort of a travel Pinterest but to me seems mostly like a Foursquare alternative.

Like Social Networking? Here’s a Pinterest Alternative

Kulisha is an interesting site that takes the format of Pinterest and applies it to aggregating your social sites so that you can look at posts from those sites in a different way. Currently you can connect just your Facebook and Twitter accounts. When you do, the feeds from both are fed into a Pinterest-style visual display. I can’t see a way yet to connect multiple accounts from either of these sites. And it doesn’t actually have the sharing feature that is so critical to a Pinterest site. I think some work would need to be done to make a site like this useful but it’s an interesting idea.

How About Music? Yep, there’s one of those Too.

Sworly takes the idea of a Pinterest and applies it to music sharing. When you look at your board you see images of album covers, the name of the song and album, how many “hearts” or “repins” it got from others and, if applicable, a link to the song on iTunes. You can post songs by typing ideas into a search engine. It’s got some work to go on it but another interesting niche idea.

Like Fashion and Style? There’s a Pinterest for That

Actually, there are quite a few Pinterest clones for fashion and style lovers, which makes a bit of sense since this is absolutely a visual-rich niche interest. I personally adore several of these sites. I don’t actually buy high end fashion or designer labels but I think that fashion ads and style blog posts are often super artistic and fun to look at. The niche Pinterest clones for the fashion and style lover are Spark Rebel (my personal favorite) and Stylepin.

I also have to give a small shout out to Polyvore here. This isn’t a Pinterest clone; it’s definitely it’s own site with its own design and vibe. But it’s a great alternative to Pinterest if you’re a fashion lover!

Love Weddings? Yep, You Guessed It.

Weddings are a big business these days so it’s hardly any surprise that there’s a niche Pinterest clone specific to the wedding market. It’s called Tailored. It incorporates some fun features, like helping you find your personal wedding style, that make it unique from just looking at wedding pins on Pinterest.

Like Instagram? There’s a Pinterest for That

If there’s any recent app craze that is comparable to the Pinterest craze is the Instagram craze. People have absolutely fallen in love with taking these modern day Polaroid photos to share with others. So perhaps it’s only natural that there’s now Pingram.me, a Pinterest style visual sharing site specifically for sharing Instagram photos. You can already share through Instagram, of course, but this provides you a different format for looking at the shared images that perhaps you prefer if you’re a Pinterest fan.

Like Boy Things? Pinterest Alternatives for Men

One of the criticisms of Pinterest has been that it’s too girly. Naturally, there are now Pinterest alternatives for men. Guys who want to share images of men’s style, sports things and cars can use Manteresting. A more general range of guy interests seem to be making their way onto Gentlemint. And there’s Dart It Up for “dudes” which uses virtual “dartboards” in place of pins.

Like Porn? Yep, there’s a Pinterest for That

I suppose it goes without saying why this would be a good niche for visual Pinterest-style displays. There are probably several sites like this but the one that I know of is Snatchly. Classy, clearly. It appears to be mostly posts of porn for straight men.

Pinterest is definitely addictive, but so is HubPages. One does it with images and the other with language and images. I am a HubPages addict because I love to read and write. I like Pinterest because it can be a vehicle for Hub articles and it has so many ideas, visually, if you're looking for ideas. I liked this hub because it informs about a site which some are unfamiliar with. If you're visual also, Pinterest is awesome. It has something for everyone. Thanks for this read.

Emma Jones 5 years agofrom New York, New York

pintrest rocks, I love ths site. amazingly new concept for those who are bored of other SN. :) yes its a social network guys enjoy

hi friend 5 years agofrom India

A great hub and resourceful one

moneytoplist 5 years ago

It seems like a nice idea to join not only facebook but also some niche social networks. However, not sure how active are the members of such communities -- if you take into account that all of them have probably most of their friends on facebook, but only a few in such niche social networks, I believe they don't spend so much time there.

Shasta Matova 5 years agofrom USA

Wow, I didn't know there were so many clones of Pininterest. I guess when someone has a great idea, everyone wants to steal a cut of the action.

This is very interesting! I'm a big fan of pinterest. :) "Ravelry (knit and crochet social networking) better than Facebook and Hookey (just crochet social networking)better than Facebook"...I never heard this social networking sites... Would love to check this out! :)

Author

Kathryn Vercillo 5 years agofrom San Francisco

It's a method of visually sharing what you like with others and seeing what they like. It's similar to sharing on Facebook or Twitter but it allows you to do it visually instead of with text. Works for some and not for others.

Philip Cooper 5 years agofrom Olney

Nice hub. I have been using Pinterest for a while now to promote my hubs and I think I have extra traffic from the site. Voted up!

thost 5 years agofrom Dublin, Ireland

Great Hub, thank you for the information. Vote up.

Chasuk 5 years ago

I guess I need an invite to Pinterest to adequately check it out. Would someone kindly extend me one?

Thanks!

Rose Clearfield 5 years agofrom Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Great resources! Thanks!

Chasuk 5 years ago

I guess I'll have to give it another look.

Thanks, everyone! :-)

buckleupdorothy 5 years agofrom Istanbul, Turkey

Nice run-down! I had no idea (but could have guessed) about all these digital mushrooms poking up.

@Chasuk, I've found pinterest really fantastically useful for recipes - it's so easy to sort through and make a varied weekly menu... It's also turned out be excellent for taking care of that random urge to shop, which is increasingly useful as budgets get tighter.

And of course, I think pretty much everyone has some sort of 'for the home' board (it's one of their recommended ones) which is a great outlet for any latent nesting instinct, and a good way to catalogue home improvement ideas.

To each his own, of course, but I've found it to be reasonably useful - the only trick is to keep it useful, and not let it become a time-suck.

Sandra Busby 5 years agofrom Tuscaloosa, Alabama, USA

Thanks, Kathryn, for this great hub on pinterest clones. I am learning so much about the internet and this is one of the most fun things so far.

Nizam Khan 5 years agofrom Hyderabad, India.

Pinterest have a great concept to index the content using image. Just add the link and the content is pinned through image, and once click on it, it will direct you to the original web page. You can easily create boards to manage your pins. This site is really interesting and I use it often to share my Hubs. This is excellent content sharing and social media service. You have provided some useful and helpful information. Thanks and voted up :)

Chasuk 5 years ago

I'm going to be honest, I don't understand the interest that Pinterest has generated. So I can "pin" pictures of things that interest me. Doesn't that make it, essentially, Show 'n Tell with pictures? So what?